Word Magic: Possible to avoid cliches?
January 27th 2009 01:24
I'm not sure if it's possible, but I'm going to try.
Word magic can be considered cliche simply because it's the standard form of magic in all fantasy these days. Fat wizards with gaudy robes spouting off arcane drivel from an open book, explosions and monsters appearing as the result.
I think word magic was first popularized with Ursula K. Le Guin's Earthsea Trilogy. It was effective for her because 1) it (her form of it) was original with her; 2) It wasn't the driving force of the narrative--the characters were; and 3) the nature of the magic itself dealt with deeper themes and wasn't just used as a spectacle to distract the readers from the books' bland plotline and flat characters. She carefully constructed her system of magic-with-words to have it mean something more and add to the intellectual depth of the story.
In Argul--my fantasy world--there is a form of magic that uses words that has been long forgotten. It was an ancient language given to a lost race as both a gift and a curse. The language is a lesser, restricted version of the Creation language; as long as the written characters were present when a speaker spoke the words--and if the speaker understood the words, what they meant, and clearly knew the desired result--then anything could happen. The text of the words, or a character representing certain words, must have been written legibly along with the same words spoken by the caster for an effect to happen.
For example, if someone wanted a tree to burst into flames, they would have to have either the actual sentence written out, or the characters representing fire and/or trees, and speak the words at the same time. If someone had the written words and could pronounce them, but didn't understand what they said, it wouldn't work. Likewise, if someone knew how to speak the language but didn't know the alphabet of that language, it wouldn't work. The actual phonetic words of the language--written in the letters of that language--had to be present along with the speaker's knowledge of how to speak the words, and what they mean.
The task that the Creator gave to this lost race was that they must maintain the integrity of the language, never altering it or introducing impurities into it. This was tough, since the natural course of living languages is to change; meld and morph with other languages and the passage of time and the movement of its speaking population. That's just how it works. But this language and its people could not change, or the power of the language would weaken.
Well, nature took its course: the people let the language degenerate, and it lost power as its form further deteriorated, via the process of Analogy with other languages. But that's not what made the Creator angry; the deterioration of the language was an intrinsic aspect and punishment of the nature of the language itself. The punishment for letting it deteriorate was bad enough.
It was when the people attempted to break the divine barrier of their language that the Creator became angry. They tried to see how they could break the language barriers between their language--already quite powerful--and the very language of Creation. Being inferior temporal beings, they could not have even begun to understand the cosmic complexities of the Creator's language: it was their pride and false confidence--faith in themselves, not Him--that brought about their destruction.
After their civilization fell and their cities were destroyed and lost, the knowledge of the lost language was mostly forgotten. Millenia later, scholars, explorers, and magi would begin to uncover the lost secrets and piece them back together. The name of the lost language was Aunedhel. Some people would find the New Aunedhel: the deteriorated, less potent form of the language, which was more prevalent at the time of the destruction. It would take much deeper investigations to uncover the Old Aunedhel, the pure language of magic, and even less fragments of that would be found. The magic would be less potent, since people only knew fragments and particles of the language and its grammar and phonetics, etc. But eventually a brilliant and malicious Ice Master would uncover the rest of the secrets, and the world would change again.
What makes this brand of word magic interesting, to me, aside from its history and realistic linguistic pitfalls, is that it cannot create or destroy anything: it can only manipulate what already exists. What this means is that there are no "power word kill" or "resurrection" type spells, since once a thing's life force is extinguished it can't be created again, and the magic can't just snuff out someone's life force. Yes, the magic can kill things the traditional ways, like burning them, tearing them apart, freezing them, blowing them away, etc. Even if something is reduced to dust, its physical matter is still there, not 'destroyed.' This manipulation can include everything from building a palace out of ice within seconds to causing animals to appear seemingly from nowhere--except the ice (water) and animals would have been taken, by magic, from somewhere else in the world. Only the Creator--whose name is Ankhalo, and who is also the enemy of Dae-Vairar, the Darkness, the cosmic feud which The Frozen Crown is essentially about--can speak things into Creation or Destruction. It was the effort to discover how to do this for which the Aunedhel people were destroyed.
A friend and I are working together to construct the Aunedhel language. We're basing it off of Hebrew and its characters, just altering the characters in appearance to be different and changing its sounds to be something different. It's easier and more realistic to make a fantasy language working from a real language as a base. Tolkien did the same thing with his Dwarven language and runes--based on Anglo-Saxon runes--and I believe his Elvish language was based from some Norse language, like Finnish. I can't remember, though--I'll have to look it up. The point is, his languages were cohesive and worked intrinsically because he used a real language as a base. Making an entirely new language seem realistic would take years and years, otherwise it would feel stilted and contrived. I hope, when it's finished, it will feel like a legitimate language, and that the use of this magic (eventually) will seem like a special thing.
Good night everyone.
Word magic can be considered cliche simply because it's the standard form of magic in all fantasy these days. Fat wizards with gaudy robes spouting off arcane drivel from an open book, explosions and monsters appearing as the result.
I think word magic was first popularized with Ursula K. Le Guin's Earthsea Trilogy. It was effective for her because 1) it (her form of it) was original with her; 2) It wasn't the driving force of the narrative--the characters were; and 3) the nature of the magic itself dealt with deeper themes and wasn't just used as a spectacle to distract the readers from the books' bland plotline and flat characters. She carefully constructed her system of magic-with-words to have it mean something more and add to the intellectual depth of the story.
In Argul--my fantasy world--there is a form of magic that uses words that has been long forgotten. It was an ancient language given to a lost race as both a gift and a curse. The language is a lesser, restricted version of the Creation language; as long as the written characters were present when a speaker spoke the words--and if the speaker understood the words, what they meant, and clearly knew the desired result--then anything could happen. The text of the words, or a character representing certain words, must have been written legibly along with the same words spoken by the caster for an effect to happen.
For example, if someone wanted a tree to burst into flames, they would have to have either the actual sentence written out, or the characters representing fire and/or trees, and speak the words at the same time. If someone had the written words and could pronounce them, but didn't understand what they said, it wouldn't work. Likewise, if someone knew how to speak the language but didn't know the alphabet of that language, it wouldn't work. The actual phonetic words of the language--written in the letters of that language--had to be present along with the speaker's knowledge of how to speak the words, and what they mean.
The task that the Creator gave to this lost race was that they must maintain the integrity of the language, never altering it or introducing impurities into it. This was tough, since the natural course of living languages is to change; meld and morph with other languages and the passage of time and the movement of its speaking population. That's just how it works. But this language and its people could not change, or the power of the language would weaken.
Well, nature took its course: the people let the language degenerate, and it lost power as its form further deteriorated, via the process of Analogy with other languages. But that's not what made the Creator angry; the deterioration of the language was an intrinsic aspect and punishment of the nature of the language itself. The punishment for letting it deteriorate was bad enough.
It was when the people attempted to break the divine barrier of their language that the Creator became angry. They tried to see how they could break the language barriers between their language--already quite powerful--and the very language of Creation. Being inferior temporal beings, they could not have even begun to understand the cosmic complexities of the Creator's language: it was their pride and false confidence--faith in themselves, not Him--that brought about their destruction.
After their civilization fell and their cities were destroyed and lost, the knowledge of the lost language was mostly forgotten. Millenia later, scholars, explorers, and magi would begin to uncover the lost secrets and piece them back together. The name of the lost language was Aunedhel. Some people would find the New Aunedhel: the deteriorated, less potent form of the language, which was more prevalent at the time of the destruction. It would take much deeper investigations to uncover the Old Aunedhel, the pure language of magic, and even less fragments of that would be found. The magic would be less potent, since people only knew fragments and particles of the language and its grammar and phonetics, etc. But eventually a brilliant and malicious Ice Master would uncover the rest of the secrets, and the world would change again.
What makes this brand of word magic interesting, to me, aside from its history and realistic linguistic pitfalls, is that it cannot create or destroy anything: it can only manipulate what already exists. What this means is that there are no "power word kill" or "resurrection" type spells, since once a thing's life force is extinguished it can't be created again, and the magic can't just snuff out someone's life force. Yes, the magic can kill things the traditional ways, like burning them, tearing them apart, freezing them, blowing them away, etc. Even if something is reduced to dust, its physical matter is still there, not 'destroyed.' This manipulation can include everything from building a palace out of ice within seconds to causing animals to appear seemingly from nowhere--except the ice (water) and animals would have been taken, by magic, from somewhere else in the world. Only the Creator--whose name is Ankhalo, and who is also the enemy of Dae-Vairar, the Darkness, the cosmic feud which The Frozen Crown is essentially about--can speak things into Creation or Destruction. It was the effort to discover how to do this for which the Aunedhel people were destroyed.
A friend and I are working together to construct the Aunedhel language. We're basing it off of Hebrew and its characters, just altering the characters in appearance to be different and changing its sounds to be something different. It's easier and more realistic to make a fantasy language working from a real language as a base. Tolkien did the same thing with his Dwarven language and runes--based on Anglo-Saxon runes--and I believe his Elvish language was based from some Norse language, like Finnish. I can't remember, though--I'll have to look it up. The point is, his languages were cohesive and worked intrinsically because he used a real language as a base. Making an entirely new language seem realistic would take years and years, otherwise it would feel stilted and contrived. I hope, when it's finished, it will feel like a legitimate language, and that the use of this magic (eventually) will seem like a special thing.
Good night everyone.
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Comment by Dianna G
I Wish This Was 42
Fictional Worlds
I know that one of Tolkien's languages is based off of Welsh.
I personally don't have the determination to make a language; I make up words here and there, but I don't have the willingness to make it work properly.
There is also the problem with my concept of language-I understand it very well on an instinctual level, and find it very hard to break it down into building blocks. This makes learning other languages easy and difficult, but making one, even based on a real language? Not in my lifetime.
Good luck with your magic system! And for a unique and wonderful magic system, try reading the Abhorson trilogy by Garth Nix; his system, the Charter, is interesting.
~Dianna